key: cord-1028164-vyt63hnx
authors: Tian, Yuan; Rong, Long
title: Letter: role of probiotics in the COVID‐19 pandemic—authors' reply
date: 2020-08-14
journal: Aliment Pharmacol Ther
DOI: 10.1111/apt.15931
sha: 111ec58d577406d95048a4aa5503c832936bb843
doc_id: 1028164
cord_uid: vyt63hnx

LINKED CONTENT This article is linked to Tian et al and Aguila et al papers. To view these articles, visit https://doi.org/10.1111/apt.15731 and https://doi.org/10.1111/apt.15898

We read with great interest the review of our article by Dr Aguila and colleagues. 1 We are grateful for their comments. Probiotics have been a hot and controversial topic in recent years. We agree that probiotics may be potentially helpful in the treatment of patients with severe COVID-19, but there is a lack of evidence to demonstrate the effect of probiotics directly inhibiting SARS-CoV-2 infection.

In the early days of the outbreak, antibiotics were commonly Many studies have demonstrated the pathogenic links between microbiota and the gut-lung axis, which is a dynamic immune balance between these two mucosal sites. A respiratory pathogen may cause gut and lung dysbiosis as well as altered leucocyte level and activation disorders. 4 Reintroduction of probiotics promotes the release of short chain fatty acids from microbiota 5 or cytokines and chemokines from the lungs or gut of the host, 6 

The authors' declarations of personal and financial interests are unchanged from those in the original article. 10 

Letter: role of probiotics in the COVID-19 pandemic

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AP&T correspondence columns are restricted to letters discussing papers that have been published in the journal. A letter must have a maximum of 500 words, may contain one table or figure, and should have no more than 10 references. It should be submitted

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